


Room 301

by Miss_Cosmonaut



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Runaways, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, POV Baz, all based in the US, all them desert vibes yooooo, and baz is a moody little english crumpet, because shameless self-indulgence that's why, desolate gas stations, he's still adorable tho, kind of smutty?, nevada motels, older simon, simon's american, taller simon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 21:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6923446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Cosmonaut/pseuds/Miss_Cosmonaut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time I kissed him, I was drunk. The second time, only a little. The third time, I wasn't. The fourth time, I straddled him in the back of his dumb Pickup and came undone. The fifth time, he told me I was his only right thing. By the tenth time, I was still wondering what he'd meant.<br/>After the fifteenth time, I stopped counting; I just made sure every time counted more than the last. </p><p>---</p><p>Just runaway snowbaz being super gay in a motel room together <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Room 301

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the US (because I have a thing for deserts and motels...and American Simon...? Why tho...?)
> 
> Simon's 24 and taller than Baz. Yes. My bro. You guessed it. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and think of small Tyrannus sitting on Simon's lap like some grumpy kitten while said tall freckled boyfriend just happily pets his flawless hair. Small Baz is the most adorable thing...ever. JUST THINK OF HIM BOSSING EVERYBODY AROUND WITH A BROOM BECAUSE HE CAN'T REACH JACK SHIT. HIS TINY FURY OHMYGOD.
> 
> Anywho, not betad! Have a wonderful day!!

I'd never written a letter before. I thought that was a strange thing for an eighteen-year-old. A strange thing for anyone, really. I'd always wanted to write a letter. There was something theatrical about them. It was in the way your words were so limited, in the way you had to ponder and choose all the right things to say. It was personal. Especially goodbye letters. Goodbye letters were the pinnacle of all letters, and they were only ever supposed to be written once you'd practiced on your own fair share of 'other' letters. Making a goodbye letter your first was like climbing up Mt. Everest without having a plan.

Not that I was writing a goodbye letter. Not a real one. It was more of a 'see you later' letter. A 'I'm off, but I'll be coming over for Christmas' letter. A 'I don't know what I'm doing, and I'll miss you' letter. A 'small goodbye' letter.

I gripped the pen harder as I tapped it across the edge of the postcard, blue ink splattering, morse-code-like. It was one of those fifty-cents cards with a picture on the front: _Greetings from Nevada_ stamped across a desert landscape sprinkled with cartoon cactuses and one lonely cowboy chewing on wheat.

It took me five gas stations to find one without a casino. Or a stripper pole.

Fiona would like it. I imagined she would hang it from a string and let it dangle between the cluster of herbs and medicine bags cluttered behind the storefront of her tasseography shop. _Greetings from Nevada_ , my 'small goodbye' letter. And she'd look at it every morning, see my crooked writing and my poorly chosen words, and she'd think of me: on the road, somewhere out in the world, some place big where even bigger things happen.

But up until now, _Dear Fiona_ was all I'd been able to write. My brain was gibberish.

I groaned and flung myself across the bed, the pink-patterned sheets, watched the ceiling fan turn in lazy circles. I counted the creaks to ten over and over again. It was strange knowing that this was the last time I'd get to hear these sounds, that this was the last time I'd get to lie on this itchy duvet cover, all sticky-pink and rippled, while counting creaks and not knowing what to do with myself.

I sighed and turned to face the window - waiting for a shadow to swoosh past the glow of the motel sign. I looked at the door - waiting for it to finally swing open.

Simon had gone to get us something to eat over an hour ago. The night had already leaked in, and I hadn't even bothered turning the lights on. I'd been sitting in the dark, staring at the blank back of a fifty-cents postcard, praying for the right words to surge through my knuckles. The right words for a Small Goodbye.

I crumpled into a ball, tried to squeeze all of myself into the sweater Simon had insisted on making me wear. He said I got cold too easily. He was being ridiculous.

It smelled like him. I dug my nose into the sleeves wondering whether I should add him to the Small Goodbye. I knew I should. It was Simon. Simon was the reason I had to write this letter in the first place.

 

_I've eloped, Fiona. I met a bloke. An ill-bred, uncivilized, good-for-nothing…lovely…fucking lovely, lovely bloke. With uncombable hair and permanent holes in his socks. He's strange and daft and loud. So, so loud. Too loud for someone who doesn't know how to talk properly. He says he's from Glen Ferris, but I think he was born in a cave, or a sweatshop, or a barn in the middle of nowhere, some place impolite and churlish, where everybody chews with their mouths open._

_And I think he's the best thing that's ever happened to me._

_But that's a secret._

_I'd never tell a soul. Not even you. Maybe…especially, not you. You'd roll your eyes, cock both your eyebrows. You'd throw one of your tea cups at me and scream, 'I told you so! It's been in the tea leaves since the beginning of bloody time! But you ignore all my readings, you daft little bugger!'_

 

I dug my face into the rest of Simon's sweater, breathed him in. Hated him a little, missed him a little.

 

_It's a secret, Fiona. It's a secret._

 

I switched the telly on, let the midnight commercials play on mute while I migrated to the wobbly table by the window, pressed my forehead against the cool glass. Outside, nothing but desert night and the _Ebb's Motel_ sign fizzing an electric, chlorine-pool-blue. A flare for the lost.

There was something lonely about the motel in the dark. Lunar. As if it was soaring through space with all its black voids and infinite things, everything out of reach, all these pink-carpeted rooms harboring cosmonauts without a cause.

But I didn't mind the loneliness of it all. I had a fondness for it, so strong I'd always miss it once I was back in town - back on earth - in the midst of all things living and full.

Room 301 at Ebb's Motel was home. This was my last night in space.

A curly-haired shadow cut through the glow of the neon sign, heavy steps scraping across the sandy concrete outside. Simon shuffled through the door armed with plastic bags, the heart-shaped glasses he'd stolen from a gas station shoved up into his hair. He smiled. I caught myself thinking I wouldn't even have to turn the lights on. Simon's smiles were brighter than every supernova combined.

"Hello, crumpet," he singsonged in a terrible British accent, kicking the door closed and dumping the plastic bags onto the bed.

I rolled my eyes.

I'd never tell him I liked it when he called me that. Because then I'd call him disgusting. And then he'd laugh. And then he'd chuck my chin. And bite my ear. And kiss me so hard my brain exploded.

I swallowed, pressed my legs against my chest and pulled the sweater over them, flexed my toes against the hem. I never failed to feel like a toddler in plus-sized hand-me-downs whenever Simon made me wear his things.

"Sorry it took so long." He stumbled out of his shoes and kicked them into a corner, a waft of sand dusting the blotchy carpet. I'd stopped telling him to take his shoes off before coming in a long time ago. He was like a stray dog, always hungry, always dragging dirt into anywhere air-conditioned.

"Had to drive one town over to find a place that's still open," he mumbled, wiping his face with the hem of his T-shirt."Soggy BLTs…Warm beer…" He grinned. "And these."

I barely managed to catch the pack of fags he flung my way.

"Thanks."

"Mhm." He stumbled over to press his mouth into my hair. "You smell good," he hummed, kissing a sloppy trail from my temple, to my cheek, my chin. I couldn't help but nuzzle up, trying to reach everything at once.

"Showered," I mumbled against his mouth. He tasted like smoke hiding behind peppermint chewing gum.

"Without me?" He made me sound like a traitor.

"Next time," I promised. I tried to kiss his cheek, but he was so far up all I could reach was his jaw. I bit him, quickly, felt him shiver. "Go." I scrunched my nose. "You smell like - "

"Man."

"Roadkill. "

" _Manly roadkill_."

I rolled my eyes. He tried to roll his back, but it just made him look cross-eyed. I bit his chin. He kissed my forehead.

"Go." I smiled.

"Yes, sir," he said, slipping the heart-shaped glasses onto the bridge of my nose. 

He laughed. He was the sky on the Fourth of July.

I shoved him off, trying too hard to look annoyed. He kissed my forehead one last time before stumbling to the shower, yanking his T-shirt off, his tattoos rippling, tangled and twisted in the white bathroom lights. I felt silly for staring at the scratch marks etched across his shoulder blades, swollen pink intruders between all that ink, reminders of last night's misbehaviors. 

A familiar heat started to leak down my gut. Wallow-like. Obscene.

 

_I've eloped, Fiona. I met a bloke. He knows how to blast me up to the fucking moon._

 

She'd tip over. She'd hit the ceiling. She'd whack the back of my head with some divination book and say, _'Those are the ones I warned you about the most! But you never listen! Plonker!'_

And I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew. Bloody hell, I couldn't help it. Maybe my brain was wired that way. Maybe I had some fucked up fondness for freak accidents, the kind that left no piece of you spared. Complete calamities. 

Simon was a fight and an uproar, a breakdown and the end of a life. I didn't know if we would've ended up here if he'd been a little more quiet, a little more careful.  There was this rawness to him, unrefined, as if he'd never dare to try and flatten his edges - the way everyone did where we were from, a place reigned by clipped lawns and fast cars, bleached teeth and fake tan smudged across ironed collars. 

Glen Ferris was a perfect piece of pastry left to rot in the middle of Nevada-nowhere.

Simon hadn't fit. He'd been Glen Ferris' very own abnormality, an outlander without ever considering to hide it.  I liked that about him the most. His otherness. His honesty. Simon had been the only real thing in that town. And now, Simon was the only real thing in this discreet little life of mine. 

How was I supposed to explain Simon in my Small Goodbye? How was Simon supposed to fit on the back of a fifty-cents postcard?

 

☓☓☓

 

The BLTs tasted like garbage. But that didn't stop Simon. He'd still consider them eatable two days from now - after simmering in the back of his Pickup.

We ended up sprawled across the bed, tangled into each other, watching mute commercials while whispering sweet nothings. The way we used to.

Thinking back, it was strange how this room was only supposed to be a one-time secret. We never intended for it to turn into this: a place where we could pretend our lives were in order and everything in it was bulletproof, where he could call me his, and I could say it back without looking over my shoulder.

Room 301, the one and only place I could kiss him without an apology or an excuse, without having to explain myself. Here, I could touch him and think, _I like you, and you like me, and the rest is nobody's fucking business._

I reached for Simon's hands and held them as tight as I could. He had wonderful hands. Bigger than mine. Tougher. They knew how to fix cars and punch cheeks and jumpstart every molecule in my system. There was something severe about them. Maybe I was mad to think that was a good thing. But I was holding them now - these scarred and freckled perfect things - and it felt like I wouldn't know how to let them go.

I pressed his knuckles against my mouth, smiled at the way his breath kicked. I liked kissing his hands. It did things to him. Full-body-shiver things. Hot-flush-cheek things.

He lifted a thumb and pressed it against the edge of my mouth, let it glide across my bottom lip, his skin grazing my teeth. I hooked a leg around his waist and pulled him closer, closer, closer until our chests touched, and our chins and our mouths. He was wearing nothing but his track pants, the rest of him shower-damp and warm against me. I let my fingers crawl up into his hair, wrapped the wet curls around my knuckles and tugged. Just enough for him to want a little more.

"Is the manly roadkill stench gone?" he mumbled.

I grinned, reveling in the way he tensed before digging his face into the crook of my neck.

"No," I said, swallowing a chuckle when he pinched my stomach so hard I blurted, "Shit, okay! You smell like a goddamned daisy."

"Yeah, I do."

His mouth on my skin, teeth digging. I jerked at the feeling of his tongue grazing along every curve, every hollow. I was breaking a little. His hand toughened on the slope of my back, fingers crawling under his sweater.

His skin on my skin.

That was all it ever took. One touch, and I was pliant, giving myself over without a fight. I was down on my knees, and he was the closest thing I had to a cross and a prayer and my spine against a pew.

He kissed me, and I was done for. Hands roaming. Clothes scattered. Room going hazy.

I was gone. Simon was the only real thing left.

 

☓☓☓

 

I liked the afterwards the most - sweat in the air, leftover lube and too many towels. When I was warm and spent, sprawled across his chest while his fingers drew spirals down my spine. When we were quiet and breathing, nothing but the creaks of the ceiling fan keeping us company.

I shifted, kissed the little dip between his collar bones. He shivered. I liked that. I liked that so much.

"Are we…really doing this?" I asked. Unnecessarily careful.

Simon curled my hair behind my ear. Unnecessarily careful.

"Goodbye, Glen Ferris," he said. It didn't sound the way it was supposed to: meaningful and heavy. It sounded like an afterthought, like he'd said his goodbyes a long, long time ago.

His eyebrows furrowed, all his freckles and moles bunching. His fingers left my spine, their absence like a void.

"Do you want to go back?" He made it sound like something terrifying, something dangerously close to the end of the world.

I shook my head so fast my brain hurt.

"No…God, no…I -I mean, I think…I - " I stared at the wrinkle between his eyebrows. "I don't know."

I didn't know because…I didn't know. We didn't know. We were doing this without a plan. We were leaving. That was the only thing we knew. It was just _forward_ and _away_ and _go_. We didn't have anything else. It felt like we were stranded in the dark with nothing but a flashlight.

Sometimes I didn't let it bother me. And sometimes I did. But Simon always caught me before I could let it turn into something terrifying.

"Baz," he said. He made my name sound so much sweeter than it was supposed to be. "You're doing it again."

I swallowed, said, "I know…I know."

My bad habit. Always needing a safety net, always needing reassurance, always wanting to know what was at the end before I'd even taken the first step.  Simon liked to say I didn't know how to free-fall properly. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I trusted him enough to let him take my hand and show me.

I closed my eyes, felt his hands on my cheeks. He pulled me so close our foreheads touched. I held my breath. I was so still. I didn't want to miss a single thing.

"We're good like this," he whispered. "Okay? We're so, so good like this." Stead-fast. Sure.

I opened my eyes. He looked ready - for anything, for everything. His chest was inside-out, his heart out for the whole world to witness, loud and red and beating. He was right there, all of him at once, standing his ground like a figurehead in the face of every natural disaster.

Simon was a force to be reckoned with.

 

_He was just supposed to fix my car. He was just supposed to be some shitbag auto mechanic who'd rip me off and overcharge. He was just supposed to fix my car - not make me smile without wanting to, not make me say things I'd feel like stabbing myself for. He was just supposed to fix my car - not break my heart._

_It was supposed to be simple._

_But then he asked me if I felt alone, and I said nothing, and he said nothing, and I ran home thinking about his mouth._

_It was supposed to be simple._

_But then the first time I kissed him, I was drunk. The second time, only a little. The third time, I wasn't. The fourth time, I straddled him in the back of his dumb Pickup and came undone. The fifth time, he told me I was his only right thing. By the tenth time, I was still wondering what he'd meant._

_After the fifteenth time, I stopped counting; I just made sure every time counted more than the last._

 

"We're good like this," Simon said again. And he kept saying it until it hurt. "We've always been good like this…We've been good like this here, and we'll be good like this everywhere else. Okay, crumpet? Okay?"

 

_ It was supposed to be simple, Fiona. But simple isn't enough of anything.   _

_ And it's good like this. He says we're good like this.  _

  

☓☓☓

 

We were ready to leave just before the sun came up, sitting in the Pickup and watching the blue of the night clear. It felt like we were there to witness Ebb's Motel crash down into the desert, from lunar to earthbound in a matter of minutes. All its cosmonauts back to being ordinary.

We were parked right outside our room. I stared at the blue paint flaking from the door, at the slight crookedness of the numbers, as if they'd all been blown askew by an overnight sandstorm.

Room 301.

It was strange how looking at it now made me think of Simon more than the pink flamingos stitched into the curtains or the itch of the sheets or the star-shaped water stain rippled across the ceiling.

Room 301 was home. Room 301 was Simon.

I started the engine once the glow of the motel sign fizzed and faded.

"Ready for an adventure?" Simon asked, looking at me through those giant heart-shaped glasses, a giddy grin ripping his face in half.

"Yes, Dora."

He reached over to chuck my chin. And bite my ear. And kiss me so hard my brain exploded.

 

☓☓☓

 

_Dear Fiona,_

_I've decided I'm shit at goodbye letters. Honestly, at letters in general. So this isn't a letter, this is just my chicken scratch on a postcard._

_I know you've been waiting your whole life for me to finally grow a pair and do something stupid without thinking about the consequences. And I also know you were really, really hoping I wouldn't._

_But I think you were right. I think you were right about everything. Sometimes it's okay to be clueless._

_Not knowing leaves room for everything else. Not knowing turns 'monumental' into a feeling. Not knowing gives you the excuse to pretend you have the whole world at your fingertips._

_Not knowing is where I'm at. And for the first time, not knowing might be the best thing that has ever happened to me._

 

_Hope to see you soon,_

_Baz_

 

_P.S.: I'm bringing someone over for Christmas. He eats for ten. Just so you know._

 

 

☓  FIN  ☓

**Author's Note:**

> Baz's backstory is kind of weird, like, he was raised by Fiona, and they moved all the way to Nevada after he graduated from primary school because...I don't know..she wanted a fresh start? As a sassy, tea-leaf-reading voodoo witch lady? And she works at some big-ass show in Vegas? Part-time? Over the weekends? Because I'm just rolling with the most unrealistic scenarios? 
> 
> (And Simon totally has a thing for Baz's accent. And Baz totally has a thing for Simon fixing cars because bro - ngh)


End file.
